07.20.07

Well Use Me, Use Me, Cause I Ain’t That Average Cabbie

Posted in Italian, Manhattan, Seafood, West Village at 8:52 am by Administrator

You’ve got to understand something. I’m not a cab driver. I’m just a guy who drives a cab.

If I were a cab driver – one like most of those guys you find behind the wheel when you open the door to your yellow chariot in New York – I’d be working six days a week. So I’d have many more stories with which to update this blog.

Have you ever gotten into a cab and it smelled AWFUL, like the cabbie has been living in there? Well it’s because the cabbie has been living in there. Cabbies can make the most money by leasing the car for the whole week and just driving 18 or 19 hours a day. I’ve never done that, but I’ve considered it. I did try a 24 hour shift once but a little over half way through I realized those hours didn’t agree with my constitution. I managed to enjoy taking 5 or 6 lunch breaks on that shift before I quit around hour 20.

If I were an average New York cab driver, I’d have a family to support, maybe in Jackson Heights. And I’d have an extended family to support, maybe in Karachi. But I’m just a guy who drives a cab. I have just myself to support, so I drive only when I am broke, or I need money to pay the rent. If you want to sit there outside your building telling me about your favorite soup dumplings in Queens, I’m all ears. Try to do that with a real cab driver. He’d act like you’re taking food out his children’s mouths. Because time is money, and when you have people who depend on you, you’re not doing this job for fun.

If I had to drive for a living, I’d probably not be in a chipper mood chatting you up about the food in your neighborhood anyway. I’d probably be on my hands free device all the time (which are illegal for yellow cab drivers to use, so if you want your cabbie to stop talking on his, he should stop- but first ask yourself why you find it so annoying. Is it because the sound of a language you can’t understand bothers you? If that’s why, then maybe you ought not live in a city in which most of the residents weren’t even born in America). And on my hands-free, I wouldn’t be talking to my friends about where everyone is hanging out tonight, I’d be talking to other cab drivers who speak my language about which bridges are jammed, what avenues are open, which airports need cabs. I’d be working.

But I’m just a guy who drives a cab. I drive when I feel like driving. I used to drive more than I do now. But it’s a terrible job. I’ve been robbed. I’ve been attacked by a junkie. They told us in Taxi Academy that driving a cab is the second most dangerous job in America aside from being a deep sea fisherman off the coast of Alaska (I never looked it up, I could just feel in my gut that it’s true).

There is a reason that it’s only immigrants who usually do this job. The muscles in your back and legs stiffen and knot as you sit for 12 hours at a time. And there are no health benefits for cab drivers. When you have to go to the chiropractor after twenty years on the road, take a guess who pays for that.

The old timers tell me that there used to be a union, but the only thing it did for drivers was if you had a flat or broke down and you couldn’t work for a minimum of three hours, you’d get $5. Now, the Taxi Workers Alliance speaks on behalf of cabbies, but I’ve never witnessed them achieve anything significant either. They were against the GPS system being put into cabs. But all cabs have to have GPS by October.

I haven’t driven a cab in well over a month now. And I’m so happy about it. I haven’t had to scarf down my meals in five minutes so I could get back on the road to try to scratch out a profit on the night.

To me, that is one of the defining differences between people who are cab drivers and guys who drives cabs. Cab drivers always have to eat and run (not to mention pee and run) because every minute spent lingering over a meal is a minute not making money. Guys who drive cabs every once in a while have the luxury of eating like a European.

My new favorite place to kick back and enjoy a meal like a man who has no place to be (or a European who has nothing to do but eat dinner for three hours) is Palma on Cornelia Street. I’d eaten lunch there on a number of occasions and enjoyed the homemade gnocchi with ricotta salata, an inexpensive, fresh-tasting rindless cheese which happens to be one of my all time favorites from my days working at Murray’s just a few steps away from Palma.

And the green cerignola olives that arrive at the table just after you’ve been seated might be the most perfect olive I’ve ever eaten. They’re firm, yet it’s easy to pull the meat off the it. I usually ask for seconds and thirds on my olives until the waiter makes fun of me (although he always brings me more).

But when I went for dinner for my first time a couple months ago, right about the time I starting really slacking off on driving the yellow cab, I found that they serve linguine with clam sauce on the dinner menu.

Now, I love linguine with clam sauce. Rather, I LOOOOOVE linguine with clam sauce. It’s the first thing I order at any Italian restaurant. I’ve lived in Italy. I’ve lived in Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I’ve eaten more linguine with clam sauce than a lot of native Italians have (I’d like to imagine). And Palma’s linguine with clam sauce ranks as some of the best I’ve ever had. Top three maybe.

I’ve eaten it about five times now, and every time the linguine is boiled perfectly al dente, the clams are plump and fresh, and the sauce is light and delicious.

Last time I ate there I never felt less like a cabbie. I spent hours relaxing and eating. I lingered over my espresso.

While I sucked on my sugar stick like a lollipop, I gawked at Tom Brady and Gisele as they dined next to us (Melissa’s email to Page Six is quoted word for word here). You could see Gisele’s ribs through the back of her shirt, but I think she was eating. Apparently, she’s known as one of the bigger models, but she looked half dead.

The waiter/manager, who’d noticed how many times I’d shown up and ordered linguine with clam sauce in the past few weeks, was starting to think of me as a regular I suppose. So we chatted as I was on my way out of the garden in the back. “What do you do?” he asked. “I do eating tours . . . And I write . . . And I’m going to grad school,” I told him. “. . . Oh! And I’m a guy who drives a cab.”

Palma, Cornelia Street Between 6th Ave and Bleecker, West Village

Visit FamousFatDave.com for fun and food tourism

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